Google has always portrayed itself as a “new style of company”: cool, hip, enlightened and compassionate, so different from nasty capitalist enterprises of the past.” But don’t be fooled. For all its “pious rhetoric”, Google is in fact one of the worst offenders when it comes to corporate tax avoidance. In 2011 the firm made £2.6bn from Britain, its second-biggest market after the US – yet paid just £6m in corporation tax. All perfectly legal, of course, but hardly appropriate for a company devoted, in its own words, to “doing the right thing”. Not that the Government will kick up a fuss. Ministers love being associated with Google – they think it makes them look cool and modern – while the company itself has cleverly cultivated close relationships with the political elite. Its current head of public policy in the UK is one of Tony Blair’s former advisers; its global communications chief used to work for Michael Howard, and is now married to David Cameron’s former policy guru. It’s all very cosy – and “deeply unhealthy”. Our politicians should be “scrutinising” this “gigantic parasite”, not sucking up to it. (Luke Johnson, Daily Mail).

The threat of corporatocracy is worsening every year. Not only do corporations fail to pay their way, and use the lobbying system to get what they want by “influencing” politicians, but their managements are not even answerable to the shareholders. The bosses appoint their own boards and fix their own preposterous incomes.

For the sake of Epicurean peace of mind, social well-being and the rescuing of the last remnants of democracy, these modern highwaymen should be put in their place – as our servants, not our masters. This is a form of insidious tyranny.